Interview : Perseus Arcane Academy
Delighted to be asked all about my wyrd ways by the fantastical US based educational platform Perseus Arcane Academy! I'm having a Hogwarts moment, darklings.
Their blog library is quite something, rippling with invitations into some of my favourite alt realms. Thanks so much to PAA Curator James for such interesting questions that really got me to dig deep.
You can read my interview with Perseus Arcane Academy here, darklings or I have included it below.
Interview with Kerrie Basha, Bohomofo
Huge thanks to Kerrie for sharing her story with us. Lots of great information in this interview, we have provided Kerrie’s details at the end of the interview and encourage you to get in contact with her if the interview resonates with you, oh and of course share it with anyone you think may also be interested.
Table of Contents
Spiritual Practices and Beliefs
PAA: Can you elaborate on your journey into witchcraft and how it has shaped your worldview?
My journey back to witchcraft was a solitary one initially. As a youngling I permanently had my head in a book and my imagination was fired by tales from Ursula le Guin and CS Lewis. I always considered myself both magical and misunderstood, had a way of directly seeing things that seemed to enchant and irritate in equal measure and a ferocious curiosity to know what lay hidden beneath… everything. Decades later astrology would teach me why and help me understand how to knit it all together.
I was drawn to alternative anything (my Aquarian nature) and herbalism particularly, studying it in my early 20s back in the 90s when it was still considered witchcraft by the mainstream. It is a perpetual irony bomb. I always wanted to be able to care for my beloveds myself and old herbals taught me how. I became a mother young to a bright baby boy soon after, setting studies aside until he was at school. By then the world of reiki and healing had my hands burning properly. When I began studying energetic healing at 33, it opened up all of the worlds I had been dabbling in through books and practice.
When I immerse myself in any subject I tend to start with its history to get a framework and then dig into the parts that fascinate me. The fairytales of witches appealed to my girlish mind. The history of witchcraft paired perfectly with my angry young woman battling unfair and sexist paradigms, raising a child on my own in a world that stacked so much against us. Witchcraft gave me power and agency, a framework on which to tether my life that married to all my own cycles and made more common sense than anything else. It also connected many pieces I already loved so dearly and had been so innately drawn to. Words and weaving. Plants and Trees. Crystals and rocks. The moon and stars. Magic and alchemy. Healing and insight. Cards and divinations.
In my mid thirties I moved our little family out of the city and into a cottage bordered by three national parks. Living in the country away from signals and streetlights and noise and haste connected me to nature and vaster cosmologies in a felt sense. It made everything set in me and invited all kinds of wild creatures into the mix. In grounding right into the land, other dimensions opened up. I delved into shamanic witchcraft under tutelage and began to journey, meeting the guides and stories that would pull the weave through from other lifetimes. I studied past life regression and devoured books on emerging fields of neuroplasticity and epigenetics, co-mingling these ideas in my mind and marrying them to my own experiences. This naturally coincided with an explosion of creativity, writing and reading. I began to practice as a tarot reader and hold moon circles, creating Bohomofo as shield maiden for my developing witch’s work in the world.
PAA: What specific practices do you incorporate into your daily routine to maintain your spiritual connection?
I genuinely believe that witchcraft, like any devotion, is best practiced as a lifestyle rather than a construct or a convenient overlay. I weave magic into everything I do and most especially the mundane everyday practices of life, where our care and maintenance can have the greatest effect on us and by extension our worlds. Why waste a shower or a meal or cleaning or tending when you can elevate them with intention and devotion. For me it all begins with the body and the senses, our ultimate gateway. In the age of AI and socials so much of what we think we do has become completely disembodied, everyone wanting to ascend while disregarding the divine powerhouse they occupy. Banging on about somatic awareness online far more than paying attention to it in their own bodies. Showing magic without living it, rendering it a sleight of hand trick that lacks authentic substance and practice.
Deploring its opposite I start every day with the cultivation of calm and peace, more important now than it has ever been in a world that seeks to control us through fear and manipulation. It is a conscious choice to divest from chaos first thing. I like to catch the sunrise and live near the ocean so I get up in the dark and head down which gets me moving. I write voraciously and used to funnel all that morning mana into socials, now I try to stay off my phone in the early morning and pick up my pen instead. The ritual of tea and time to myself once I get back home sets my day. It is Summer here so tending the garden, watering and wafting about my plants, always comes next and sets me to right no matter what is going on outside of it.
I spent decades divesting from other people’s schedules and imperatives to craft a life that I could move through at my own pace. I guard my privacy, solitude and silence because they are the foundations of my peace. I work fairly consistently, writing every day and without hard or fast hours for clients. We work out times and ways of meeting that suits us both, which is the only way when working with people in multiple time zones and locations around the world. In this way it is easy to bake in my spiritual and mundane practices to my changing days.
As galactic consciousness blossoms and frequencies torrent from the sun, I have been placing more of my attention here in the last few years. Playing again with sound healing, calibrating to frequencies, letting light language wash through me and questing for connections far beyond this world. No one even sniffs at aliens anymore or baulks at psyops in the age of tech. And mostly we don’t use the higher order abilities of these meat suits nearly enough in the “real world”, interrogating them with rational thinking. I tend to my imagination as my primary tool. As our playgrounds are getting vaster, our base practices – all that is elemental and of this realm – need to gird us and anchor us more strongly, like the deepest of tree roots. We are still here in these bodies and on this earth for a whole bunch of very good reasons that best not be ignored. I use my spiritual practices to integrate all the levels of my being.
PAA: How do you define *shadow work*, and why do you believe it is essential for personal growth?
The shadow work that I offer is borne of my own, something I was led to by tarot. I had a few long years of constant Tower moments and Pluto lifequakes that began to make me question deeper currents at play within me. True shadow work only begins when you realise you are the common link in all the shit going on in your life, an inconvenient truth that bangs down the door for you. We cannot tend or heal anything we refuse to see, let alone admit and the blame game eventually becomes an own goal. Our shadows are blind spots by design, their subterfuge and tether a protective mechanism housing far more than bad behaviour and broken pieces. We also stuff all that we are scared to radiate – or have been shamed for – in the shadow so it hides treasure as well, tonnes of it.
Shadow is the work of these revolting times. We have to scatter our focus when peering into our shadows because they are also borne of culture, education, belonging and influence that we take personally. If we the people are the humans tasked, individually and collectively, with saving this dying world and building a future that isn’t precarious then we have to do far more than peer at it through our phones or yell at others from there about how they think. We actually have to get our hands dirty in the muck and bloody business of revolution, which begins from the inside out.
We can – and should – march but do we just as boldly stride into ourselves and pull out all our internalised -isms? Bang down the barriers to love instead of living in fear that others will find out who you really are when no one is looking. Reclaim ourselves from our sorest spots and no-go zones by integrating our lived experiences and alchemising them into bespoke wisdom. Shadow work is learning how not to come from pain while rooting firmly into purpose, path and power. And that is the soul’s quest, ultimate guide above and below everything else. This work tends the animal body as much as it does the soul and its impact ripples through lifetimes and bloodlines in all directions. It is as important as that and a huge channel of my life’s work and devotion, built for this time in our stories.
PAA: Can you share an experience where your spiritual practices significantly impacted your life or the life of someone else?
My spiritual practices hold me together while infusing my entire life with magic. They delight me and connect me, so I am baffled by religious or spiritual practices that operate any other way and call themselves divine. Religions built on guilt and shame are just power systems in drag, mainly Dior apparently. The cult of modern spirituality that drags people out beyond their comfort zones and then just leaves them hanging there is dangerous to the spirit.
The way we impact others is by how we make them feel, so I strive to hold people in a circle of care that sees them in complex entirety and seeks to understand. The most consistent side effect that people enjoy from working with me is the restoration of sleep and the cultivation of peace, which is the inevitable result of feeling seen and coming home to yourself. From there everything gets generative and creative and inspiring, which changes the world you live in and the lens you experience it through. The process is joyful in the end.
PAA: How do you integrate your knowledge of herbalism and energy healing into your spiritual work?
The modern world does its very best to keep us disconnected from nature. Instead, we struggle through the overlay it has built atop it stuffed with chemicals and plastics, jarring noise and disruptive frequencies that literally choke and pollute all our environments. In an everlasting individualist pursuit of greatness and money, we have lost soul and forgotten what makes us human. The tech revolution has pulled us even further away, feeding on our attention and starving us of connection. Herbalism like most of my work centralises a connection to nature and the simpatico relationship we are designed to maintain with our world. In burning times when it can easily feel that everything is going to smoke and ash, we need non ordinary consciousness as much as we need solutions that connect us to nature. None of these things are actually separate if they all come through the body, which is where herbs begin alchemising our ills and restoring balance.
Writing and Creative Process
PAA: What motivated you to write Morsel, and what themes did you aim to convey through this collection?
I had been writing online for over a decade, honing my voice and my creative process. Social media forced me to contain my multitudes into tiny character limits which taught me an economy of words. I loved the discipline of telling a deep story within a few paragraphs or pages. My oldest dream was always to write a book but publishing challenged all of my shadows over the decades. So, I decided to begin with a collection of these morsels. I chose the poetry and prose that was closest to my heart and my essence.
PAA: How do you draw inspiration from mystical experiences when crafting your stories and poetry?
Every page of Morsel is drawn from my own journeying and adventures through my consciousness and imagination. The backbone of all my work, whether in the Coven or in shadow with clients, is developing our own inner sight and knowing. The journalling and writing process is integral in understanding and drawing meaning from these adventures and I find tends to feed further inspiration.
PAA: Can you discuss the role of storytelling in spiritual practice? How does it enhance understanding or connection?
Our stories and spells have ultimate power over us, whether we pay attention to them or not. We are constantly casting over our lives and time here, in our own voice using our own power either for or against ourselves. Changing perspective and thus the story you are telling yourself – about anything – is an inhouse revolution of your own consciousness. Add imagination to that, and you become the visionary of your own life.
The base of spirituality is story. All the good books and sacred texts are collections of stories that can be used as guide or sadly misused as weapon. So often healing or understanding can arrive through just the right song, or story, or conversation. My gravest concern for the future is that we have our heads so overstuffed with disembodied media and so desensitised by constant glaring exposure to violence and trauma that we forget how to listen to our own story and voice. We’ve traded whittling and wondering for smart phones that are dumbing us down irrevocably unless we reclaim ourselves from the ruse.
PAA: What challenges did you encounter while writing Morsel, and how did you overcome them?
I have long joked that I have an obsessive editing disorder that modern tech enables dreadfully. The struggle of pressing publish and having things feel finished and polished can best me on bad days. Like most writers, I am excellent at procrastination and distraction which is why I had been talking about writing a book for decades rather than pushing one out into the world. Funnily enough it was actually an awful dose of Covid and fundamentally fear of death that finally made me commit to publishing. I found the repetitive fiddly focus of editing great for keeping the sweep up of Armageddon anxiety at bay. Mostly when I hit creative challenges, they are borne of outside world stuff rather than crippling internal doubt. So, I double dare myself and place a lovely treat on the far side of the dare. It always works.
PAA: How do you feel your writing contributes to the broader conversation about spirituality and healing in today’s world?
I love to weave words, that’s what any good spell is after all, and use their peculiar power with precision. I think the best writing serves the moment by putting into words what others cannot, do not or will not. It can help us to feel and understand more deeply. There is nothing better than reading something that speaks directly to you. More broadly I think that is the role of the artist, the visionary and the mystic alike. Speaking truth to power, questioning norms and tickling underbellies, making people wonder and muse and giving them something to chew on.
Community Engagement and Online Presence
PAA: Can you describe the purpose of the *Coven Electric* community you host? What activities do members engage in?
I began the Coven Electric on Patreon in 2019 to build a private community of witches, a body of ritual and a practice that we could all tether ourselves to while developing our own spirituality, connections, intuition, skills and spellcraft. I wanted it to be devotional and well protected from outside eyes so it could operate as a safe online space, which was already getting rarer.
I create written and video content that walks us together around the wheel of the year as a lived devotion and an anchoring practice. We observe the dark, new and full moons, the astrological seasons and planetary movements, the sabbats and esbats, the sun’s flaring and frequencies, the wend and the weave of our lives among it. I have always included both hemispheres and their opposites, as we have northern and southern witches in our numbers. My father is English, where my parents were married and my Mum is Australian, where I was born. Having been lucky to spend time in both, I have a felt sense and lived experience of these opposite sides of the wheel.
PAA: How has social media influenced your ability to connect with others interested in spirituality and mysticism?
I have written on social media for over thirteen years, which can some days feel like taking your life in your hands. It has changed a great deal in that time. Once it was a fascinating way to connect with kin, find artists and creatives, exercise my craft and be inspired in what felt like a playground. Now it is a dog-eat-dog world that has had the heart and soul ripped right out of it for profit and influence. A plagiarist’s paradise even before AI scraped all our content and blew copyright off the page.
My Bohomofo pages are a community, but they also hold a significant body of work that I now no longer can assert copyright to or control over. I think it is appalling that staying on these platforms will mean submitting creativity to a marketable behemoth that consumes it like fodder and does not value it for anything other than its own ends. That retains all power
to hide or ban or completely kill my content… unless I’d like to pay a handsome regular subscription. That used to be called extortion. As a creative who wants to write all the time, I loved the immediacy of posting and the interactivity with the communities we built there. What the platforms have become feels like an absolute tragedy that holds some of our best work in its ruins. I am deeply engaged in rescuing all of mine while changing how I get my work out to people.
PAA: How do you envision the growth of Bohomofo in terms of community engagement over the next few years?
For the past few years, I have been investing my time and energy in recreating my own platforms; on my constant work-in-progress website and on Patreon where I home my teaching, subscription Channel and Coven memberships as well as developing ideas. Creating spaces for people to come to, rather than battling algorithms and control and noise.
But I am just so sick of being online all the time. This year I am also creating community the old fashioned way through circles and workshops and events, connection and word of mouth. And gardening. At the end of last year I started a little gardening business to connect people
to plants and bring more movement and connection into my life. I love to build gardens everywhere I can, especially herbs and veggies, flowers and water gardens. I really love providing a service for older people who have tiny balconies and backyards, that only need a bit of a hand that comes with a chat and a cuppa. I love their stories and I love the work too. I’m conjuring a witch’s nursery in my future that would serve as a community hub and dreaming up all I could offer there.
Future Aspirations and Projects
PAA: What are some upcoming projects or initiatives you’re excited about within Bohomofo?
As most women do who live by their cycles, I went to ground in my late forties and have emerged from my cocooning hungry to be back out in the world. This year I am focusing more on teaching and travelling. I am very excited to be a part of some larger events later in the year that will push me into more public speaking, which I really enjoy. I want to be in conversation more, so I am jumping at podcasts and the chance to chat with others beyond the circles I regularly move in. I am feeling inspired by new frontiers in my work and finding as I formulate my contributions that new things are birthing in me, which I tend to hold very close to my heart until I have nurtured them beyond their arriving portal.
PAA: How do you see the role of spirituality evolving in modern society, particularly in response to current global challenges?
Humans are hungry for spirituality and states of grace, always. We crave experiences of magic and epiphany but our connection to divinity has been fairly relentlessly cock blocked, a matter of historical record. On top of that spirituality was severed from nature and artlessly determined as something we could hope to find – never guaranteed – outside of ourselves.
The wonderful thing about the internet is its chaotic open slather which lets us all move beyond gatekeeping and influence. That is no easy thing to navigate when spirituality is marketed like Hunger Games and everyone’s an expert on the one true god. But if we let ourselves become seekers again – rather than followers or collectors – we have all the tools required at our fingertips.
I expect all of us to emerge from this Year of the Snake gleaming with a fresh glint but I know that the process is mainly shedding. The moult must come from the barriers between ourselves and whatever we experience as source. We have moved on to an eclipse axis of influence now that will court and foster our spirituality, a key to the future build on the table.
PAA: What legacy do you hope to leave through your work as an author and healer in the spiritual community?
I think others determine legacy and the one thing history is teaching us all is that it is subject to change. I am happily not for everyone and refuse to pander to mass appeal. My spirituality and how it informs my life (and thus my work) isn’t commercial, it’s deeply personal. I would rather be authentic and sleep well than bend to the tenets of a world that genuinely horrifies me some days. Integrity bests popularity always.
I hope I am ahead of my time, right out on the edges with my fox nose to the wind and my hair on fire on my best days. The underlying ethos of my healing and shadow work is that it is set down very particularly to be discovered by those who need it, when they come looking. But as a writer and thinker I would hope to inspire others as they do me when I come across an idea that sets my mind dancing, or magic words that cradle my heart.
PAA: How can individuals who resonate with your message support or participate in the growth of Bohomofo?
Because I am relentlessly shadow banned – which tracks right – and embody most of what the current crop of overlords have been trying to wipe out or control for centuries now, the very best support is sharing my work or my words. All of my communities lack barriers to entry, easily found and curated as safe spaces. I am so grateful to my patrons and clients who always have my priority because it is how we hold all the elements together that makes the magic work.
PAA: Thank you so much for answering our questions.